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Looks like Mayor Fergo and his sidekick Green Gusset have caved in to demands by angry locals in Avonmouth that Bristol City Council step up and resolve the FLY INFESTATION caused by incompetent biomass profiteers BoomEco – with fumigation and insecticides being made available to those affected from tomorrow.

To book your visit from the pest control crew or to pick up some fly spray/paper, just pop in to the library, or contact your local councillor – that’s Wayne Harvey (07769 131 094) and Matthew Melias.

So well done on everyone up there dockside for fighting the good fight – and keep up the pressure!

No flies on this kid! Protest by angry Avonmouth locals – against Boomeco, the biomass company which caused a plague of flies to descent on the village, and the authorities who have failed to sort it out – reaches Crowley Way.

Local residents in Avonmouth today said ‘enough is enough’ after the FAILURE of Bristol City Council, millionaire mayor George Ferguson, the Environment Agency and the Bristol Port Company to sort out the appalling fly infestation in the portside village – and marched on the offices of the biomass profiteers responsible, Boomeco.

After assembling at Avonmouth Park, around SIXTY ANGRY LOCALS have been on a walkabout around the town, periodically blocking roads to get their message across, as they head towards the offices of the controversial waste recycling company Boomeco.

The invasion of flies has been traced back to POOR PRACTICES AT BOOMECO, which bundles up and trades in rubbish – quaintly rebranded ‘biomass’ or ‘refuse derived fuel’ – which is then burnt to create electricity. Further fly infestations are expected if a planned new biomass power plant is built at Avonmouth docks.

Here’s a press release from the protesters:

Residents of Avonmouth are in the process of marching on the offices of the Bristol Port Company due to their their ongoing failure to deal with a recent fly infestation caused by biomass exporters Boomeco at their facility in Avonmouth.

Local elected representatives have failed to address and alleviate this problem and now Bristol Port Company want to lease a section of land to the Day Group for the storage of incinerator bottom ash less than 500 metres from residences in Avonmouth.

The campaign is led by recent independent candidate and seasoned campaigner Stephen Norman after numerous emails to the Mayor, the Port Company and Mr Oliver Latter of Boomeco have been ignored.

Residents have become frustrated at the lack action to stop such industry being attracted by the Port Company like the proposed building of a Biomass plant at the dock.

A leaflet from the Avonmouth Dust Forum also asks local residents affected by the plague of disease-spreading flies to contact as many authorities as possible in order to get this DANGEROUS HEALTH HAZARD sorted.

A reader’s impassioned plea for a cleaner Avonmouth where development benefits local residents:

Avonmouth is the DUMPING GROUND OF BRISTOL. Historically Imperial Smelting, Bristol Chemicals, Fisons, Rodia, ICI, Carbon Black and many other chemical companies have come and polluted the area with lead, sulphur and other dangerous chemicals. We had to have sirens – like the air raid sirens from the Second World War – installed to warn us to keep our windows closed. They have all been and gone now.

Now our little village is inundated with the stench that emanates from the sewage works. We have more ‘Waste Recycling Plants’ dotted around Avonmouth than is healthy. We have food waste composting plants, where the contents of all of Bristol’s little brown bins end up (together with all the fly larvae), and rubbish compacting plants that serve most if not all of Bristol. And now we have to suffer ‘biomass’ that is going to make the fly invasion even worse.

I blame Mr Ferguson and the whole of the Bristol Council. It is they that give planning permission to allow companies to operate and pollute people who live in the locality. Over the years they have tried to kill the area with chemical waste. Now we have to live like people in third world countries, with the stench of raw sewage. Blankets of dust covering the area. Explosions rattling the windows and then inundated with plagues of flies. We all pay Council Tax in and around Avonmouth, the same as the rest of the Bristol Area. WHAT DO WE GET BACK for that money?

I firmly believe it is about time the people of Avonmouth took Bristol City Council to task and asked why so many waste, recycling and biomass companies have been allowed to set up so close to habitation, and what is being done by those companies to control effluent and contamination of the local area.

On Mr Ferguson’s sale of Bristol Port: I Wonder what the value of the land is as industrial development land? I believe it is not only Bristol Port that is up for sale but also Portbury Dock. If you were to buy the equivalent amount of land to set up a port, how much would it cost? The Port Company are rightly developing the land so it makes them a good profit – but this also increases traffic servicing this growth, plus all the development that is happening in the area, like all the new warehouses and distribution centres. WHAT IS BEING DONE about all the increased heavy haulage as far as roads and increased air pollution from exhausts?

It is noted that although we have signs saying we have ‘uneven’ road surfaces as a result of heavy traffic and weather etc. Nothing seems to be being done to fix the problem.

I could carry on about all the things wrong with Avonmouth. The biggest plus for Avonmouth is the people that live here. We are a small village that has been overtaken by industry, but we are also a thriving community who care for each other, We have comparatively little crime and our children can play without being supervised all the time. We do have a lot to be grateful for because we do try and pull together. IT IS THE PEOPLE OF AVONMOUTH THAT MAKES IT A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE.

It seems the Council don’t want us to be happy together. If you don’t want to live in a third world village polluted by stench, dust, explosions, flies and everything else they can throw at us, then complain to the Environment Agency, Bristol City Council, George Ferguson, your local Member of Parliament (Lying Brigade) and the local councillors who are supposed to have your best interests at heart (if they have one).

Bristol City Council is profiting from the increased revenue from the increased development in the area – so why don’t the spend some of it trying to make the people of Avonmouth’s lives a little better? We are surrounded by industry yet pay standard Council Tax with no deduction for the pollution we have to endure. Industry around us has no thought for its close neighbours. They may employ some people from Avonmouth, but only because they enhance the companies profitability.

Do your really think “We’ve no idea if any of it’s true but here’s the text we’ve lovingly copied……” Counts as a disclaimer? If you claim to be journalists you should check your facts before just reproducing what some idiot with an axe to grind is saying.

Gary Hopkins does NOT own a home in Spain. He was NOT an undischarged bankrupt when he first stood for election (if he had been he would have been disqualified).

As to the planning stories, surely as a Councillor he should be representing residents complaining about an unauthorised change of use of a premises to a car wash? or is it OK to do this illegally in Knowle but not in the more affluent Gloucester Road (where a similar enforcement case is also pending).

Just think before you repeat unsubstantiated rumours word for word!

Uh… Whoops!

Still, good to know that Steve has lost none of his famous attention to detail since losing his seat on the council by a single vote… Apart from reading but not fully understanding the bit where we clearly state “We’ve no idea if any of it’s true”.

News reaches us from the local elections campaign trail in Kingsweston, where redoubtable Labour candidate MIKE ‘PENNYWISE’ THORNE has come up with an imaginative tactic that is certainly getting him noticed – hanging around outside school gates across the ward and handing out balloons to bemused kiddies!

Yes, in a bid to challenge a crowded field in the always hotly-contested award for most poorly-thought out idea in Bristol politics, he apparently thought this could be a vote winner.

It’s not a view shared by everyone – certainly not the principal at St. Bede’s Catholic College. She was reportedly rather MIFFED that old Pennywise hadn’t had the courtesy to tell her what he would be doing, and so had to field numerous concerned reports of “an old man handing out stuff to kids” just outside her school.

A parent who witnessed him doing the same outside the nearby Bank Leaze junior school told us that he “was using the balloons as a ploy to get parents to talk to him so he can beg for votes – the kids nag parents for a balloon so they are forced to talk to him.”

They added: “I find that a bit CREEPY – in any other situation a strange man hanging around schools would potentially be in a lot of trouble.”

Well, perhaps Pennywise is just ahead of the curve on this. Once opponents spot how well his wheeze has gone down it’s liable to get like a crowded taxi rank outside every nursery, Children’s Centre, and school in town as Bristol’s political classes jostle to target pre-teens with their tedious electioneering!

Either that or it was always a really bad idea, and someone should to have a quiet word in his shell-like…

Edited to add:

It seems like Team Pennywise doesn’t think it’s a bad idea at all, and are going to lurk round Lawrence Weston this afternoon doing it all over again!

Firstly, he claims he bought his flat in 2011 – when in fact he ACTUALLY bought it in 2012.

Secondly, he admits that he knew it was a council property BEFORE he bought it, and that he could have pulled out after he ‘discovered’ this fact:

I enquired about this and my heart sank when they said they were acting as the agents for BCC who were disposing of the property. I…almost withdrew from the process.

(‘Almost’ – but not not quite. Ah, the sweet smell of a politician’s bullshit-scented principles!)

Thirdly, Hoyt – who by his own admission at the time lived only “three doors down” from the property he was to buy – KNEW that it was owned by Bristol City Council well before it was even put on the market.

Email sent to Councillor Gus Hoyt in January 2012 (address details redacted)

We have paperwork which clearly shows that the property in question was only put up for sale AFTER February 2012 – and that Gus Hoyt had been sent details of this in January 2012 as part of his ward councillor casework.

You may have noticed Bristol’s miscast housing supremo SIR HOYTY-TOYTY taking to the pages of the Nazi Post to lecture residents in Sea Mills about how he won’t help them renovate their ex-council homes at the same time as BCC housing stock in the area is expensively perked up.

“The council must target our funding to- wards our own housing stock and those lost
to private ownership would not qualify for council investment,” blusters the buffoon.
He then helpfully explains, “Our option is never to lose our housing stock to private ownership as we have a backlog of those trying to access council properties.”

Why indeed it is! So let no-one say Sir Gus has no idea how to deal with the city’s ongoing housing crisis. It’s simple. Just buy yourself outright a nice family home in a fashionable area at a KNOCKDOWN PRICE off the council!

Obviously you’ll need to conveniently ‘forget’ you’re CONTRADICTING your own stated public policy and depriving someone else in need of a home.

Really? So surely this can’t be the same Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty, a single man, who in 2012 BOUGHT FOR CASH a very competitively priced and well-appointed family-size home in chi-chi Montpelier for just £186,500 off the, er, council could it?

Benefit gig for ‘The BRISTOLIAN’, Sunday 18 May, Red Lion, Whitehall Road, BS5 9BP. Five bands for just £5 entry – and all to help support your super, soaraway ‘Smiter’!

Come one and come all to the Red Lion in Whitehall this Sunday 18th May, where a dazzling array of talent will perform their popular music songs for your delight, and all in aid of helping us keep The BRISTOLIAN a free paper full of the news you won’t read in the Nazi Post (until three months later)!

It all kicks off at half seven, and for a mere five of your English pounds (none of Fergo’s funny money, thanks) you’ll get five fine acts performing for your discerning enjoyment: Hater UK performing as Cider Riot, local militant ska-punk stalwarts Spanner, West Country cider-folk lunaticsSurfin’ Turnips, the rocksteady stylings of The 1 Tones, and of course, big friends of the ‘Smiter’, Bristol’s own black bloc rap squad QELD.

And did we mention that it’s only a fiver?

If you don’t know it, the Red Lion (postcode: BS5 9BP) is on Whitehall Road at the junction with Lyppiatt Road, which runs between Whitehall Road and Church Road in Redfield.

This might disappoint Labour, who have their old stager JOHN ‘BUMBLE’ BEES lined up and would be hoping to keep the seat, currently held by their washed-up ex-MP, Doug Naysmith.

Norman will be running on a ticket attacking the council’s abysmal record in social care, which as well as embarrassing the city council may well expose Labour’s COULDN’T-GIVE-A-TOSS-PRIVATISE-THE-LOT attitude to social care in the city.

JANKE QUITS

Meanwhile, the current cabinet boss for social care, BARBARA JANKE will announce she will not be running for her Clifton seat again.

Janke has had little influence in changing the dismal quality of residential social care provided by private providers in the city and instead has been acting as little more than a mouthpiece for council managers determined to cover up the lethal state of privatised residential care in the city.

A suitably fitting damp squib finale for this politician of the second rank.

PAEDOS AND FOGHORNS

Over in the alternative universe occupied by INDYREDPANTS FOR BRISTOL – the political party that says it’s not a political party – it looks like business as usual to us with the endorsement by IfB of Stella Perrett as its candidate in Redland.

She, you may recall, is a close former friend and associate of disgraced local Lib Dem kiddie porn aficionado councillor John Astley, who in 2004 was convicted for his paedo peccadilloes – as well as a number of electoral fraud charges which, err, The Artist Formerly Known As Stella Hender also faced!